Everyone else had gone. His mom said it was fine. Daniel flushed and was refilling the bowl with a bucket of tub water when his family came back inside.
“I hope Hunter’s okay,” he said aloud.
“Me too,” said Zola.
“The Deng’s have a nice brick house. He’ll be fine.”
Daniel looked to his mom. “You’ve been to his new girlfriend’s house?”
She shook her head. “No, but you can bet I asked about how safe he’d be before I told him he could stay the night.”
The rain pelted the living room on the other side of the bathroom wall. More dust fell from the ceiling.
“What if our house goes down around us?” Zola asked. “It isn’t brick.”
“It won’t,” Carlton said.
Daniel was pretty sure he couldn’t know that. It was just what adults said to assuage children’s fears.
“When will I find out if my friends are okay?” she asked.
“Well,” Carlton said, “it was about eight hours or so after the heavy winds that the eye got here, so it’ll be at least that long again before we’re through this.”
“And then I’ll be able to get online?” she asked.
“Honey, it’s gonna take them a while to get power restored—”
“What about my cell phone?”
“Zola—” Daniel started.
“Let’s try and get some rest,” their mother said. She gathered bowls together and placed them in the bathroom sink. When the house shook, the spoons vibrated against the porcelain. The four of them shifted about like campers in a too-small tent, tugging blankets and pillows out from underneath each other and trying their best to get comfortable.
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep through this,” Daniel muttered as his mom puffed out the candles.
But as before, he was wrong.
15
He endured the sleep of the sick. It was a sleep punctuated by repetitive awakenings, each more blurry- minded than the last. It was a sleep of sticky sweatiness, of damp pillows, of tossing and turning and being kicked by his neighbors. It was the horrid daytime sleep of headaches and demi-awareness. Dreams started seeming more real—and the dark, stuffy, smelly, noisy room into which he awoke felt less and less true.
At some point in the day, Carlton and his mother moved out into the hallway. They slept with their feet inside the door to keep it propped open. Daniel and Zola stretched out and found new, cool spots on the tile and around the other sides of their pillows. They slept some more to while away the hours as the wind outside became less of a menace and more of a nuisance. The wind was never going to abate. Daniel felt like the noise had moved into their lives, like another stepfather, unwanted and unannounced, and now they would have to get used to it. It felt like a fever that wouldn’t go away. And just like when he was sick, Daniel thought about how little he appreciated that time of wellness. He never thought about the lack of deafening wind on a normal day. The absence went unnoticed. When he was sick, he always promised himself he’d never again take for granted being well. But once the fever passed, life continued as usual, and he rarely paused to appreciate his wholeness.
He promised.
••••
The smell of soup pulled Daniel from the hazy mist of his fretful sleep. He slowly stirred. There was pressure behind his eyes from sleeping at the wrong time of day. He stood and rubbed his face, glanced at himself in the mirror, and realized how dirty and grimy he felt. He could still taste beer on his breath, now stale. He rummaged in the bag of toiletries his mom had stashed below the sink and found his deodorant, his toothbrush, some toothpaste. He slid the former up his shirt and applied some over his sweat. He ran some water over his toothbrush, but the gurgling, hissing drip reminded him of the absence of power—and that he’d just used what was left in the pipes. He brushed as he walked out of the bathroom and turned to survey the damage in the living room.
Carlton looked up from an embrace with his mother. She was facing away from Daniel, but obviously wiping hurriedly at her eyes to keep him from seeing that she’d been crying. Daniel looked away from them and studied the mess in the room. Shattered glass twinkled all across the carpet like spilled jewels. A sheet had been hung from the blinds over the blown-out window, but the wind kept pushing it back, and rain kept filtering down to soak the insides of their home. The entire floor was soaked. Puddles had formed here and there, revealing defects in the otherwise level floor. The TV and stereo cabinet had been rained on for hours and were likely ruined. Daniel looked at his old original Xbox sitting on the floor and wondered if maybe this would be an excuse for him to finally get a newer 360.
He hated himself as soon as he thought it.
“Do I smell soup?” he asked around his toothbrush, trying to change the course of his thoughts.
His mom sniffed and nodded. She hurried past him and into the kitchen, and Daniel followed.
“The gas isn’t working,” she said. “Carlton pulled the camping gear out of the attic before the storm hit.”
Daniel saw that their old Coleman stove had been set up on the island. A worn fuel canister dangled from its curvy pipe. Flames licked and hissed at the bottom of a pot; the clear lid was fogged and bubbling with the steam of warm calories.
Daniel spit toothpaste into the sink. “I could eat that whole thing,” he said.
His mom dried the bowls from earlier with a clean towel. Daniel saw a bucket of water sitting by the sink, and realized how primitive their home had become. It was nothing more than a cave, and one that leaked rain.
He tapped his toothbrush on the edge of the sink to clean it and left it to dry. Taking a bowl from his mother, he ladled some soup into it and dug in. Carlton pulled out a loaf of bread and handed him a slice. Daniel didn’t even inquire about butter—he took a bite and chewed contentedly.
“Should we wake Zola?” he asked.
“Let her sleep as long as she can,” his mom said.
“What time is it?”
“A little after two.”
“Man.” Daniel shook his head and spooned more soup toward his lips. “When will things get back to normal? Like, when will we be able to get the house fixed? Get power and water back? That sort of thing?”
“It depends,” Carlton said, helping himself to soup. He turned down the heat on the Coleman, and the hiss lessened. “It could be that we got the worst of it, that there isn’t much damage across Beaufort or any of the surrounding area. If that’s the case, they’ll be able to concentrate on us and get things back to normal in a few days.”
“But that’s not what you think,” Daniel said between bites.
Carlton frowned. “After we eat, we should try your radio again.”
Daniel nodded. He turned as Zola exited from the bathroom, rubbing her eyes and pouting.
“Come get some soup, honey,” their mom said.
The four of them ate in the kitchen. Zola sat on one of the stools by the island, but the rest ate standing up. For Daniel, it was from having been prone so long. He suspected it was also out of abject hunger. He was too famished to take the time to get comfortable; and the noise outside made him feel too revved up to rest. There were three empty cans of vegetable soup by the sink, and after second helpings, the pot was scraped clean. Carlton turned the stove off with a click of the knob, and Daniel wondered how many of the canisters they had. His brain was in survival mode.
